art

What role might the Arts play in addressing an “environmental” movement? For an anthropologist, a culture’s art is not just a collection of facts about how, practically and concretely, these people went about their lives. It animates the spirit of those lives. To someone who is sensitive to such things, art paints a picture of what specific human cultures understood and valued. Their behavior and choices make sense to us, not because we would have made the same choices but because we see that they had a rationale and one that must have been deeply compelling to them. I think it is clear that, even though the word “rational” is part of the word “rationale,” it seems far more accurate to understand human behavior as being fundamentally motivated by feelings and values, rather than by a rational mind. We are not computers, though reductionist science is not averse to thinking our brains are simply this and no more. Nor are we robots of rigorously rational consumption, though modern economics seems to want to define mankind in this way, and to further define the beautiful, wild and dynamic earth as a “free market.”

An environmental movement that tries to argue for change using only rational and utilitarian arguments will not bring us closer to a wise relationship with the place in which we live. Good science and clear thinking has a great role to play. But if our rationale does not include affection for the places where we live, our cleverness and accumulated knowledge won’t matter. We need good stories, told compellingly by people who care about the land they stand on, the water they drink, and the creatures with whom they share living space.

The name of this blog is taken from the title of a poem by one of America’s greatest poets, James Dickey. It is a fierce poem, deeply felt, beautiful in its rage and near despair.